COMEDY; 1hr 36min
STARRING: John C. Reilly, Jenna Fischer, Kristen Wiig
Hard reign: from left, Jack White, Matt Besser and Reilly
Rocker Dewey Cox’s supercharged life gets off to a shaky start when he accidentally cuts his older brother in half. Rejected at 14 by his contemptuous father (Raymond J. Barry), Dewey, now played by Reilly, sets up house with his 12-year-old girlfriend Edith (Wiig). He hits big with the anthemic “Walk Hard” and in the tap of a toe, Dewey is inflaming the fillies and revelling in decadence while Edith, now Mrs Cox, tends their many babies alone...
You have to hand it to director and co-writer (with Judd Apatow) Jake Kasdan for trawling every roller-coaster truism in the rock ’n’ roll movie pantheon for their brazen send-up. Kudos to Reilly, too, for acting the goat as if it were Chekov, never mind that Dewey’s undoing has already been done to death — or to a near-death experience, at least — by God knows how many actual entertainers.
